1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a wireless transmitting device and wireless receiving device for respectively transmitting and receiving radio signals in mobile communication system like a wireless LAN, using a wireless packet including a preamble and data, and a wireless transmission method and wireless receiving method for use in the devices.
2. Description of the Related Art
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is now defining a wireless LAN standard called IEEE 802.11n, which aims to achieve a high throughput of 100 Mbps or more. It is very possible that IEEE 802.11n will employ a technique, called multi-input multi-output (MIMO), for using a plurality of antennas in a transmitter and receiver. IEEE 802.11n is required to coexist with the standard IEEE 802.11a where OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex) is used. So, it is required that IEEE 802.11n wireless transmitting device and receiving device have so called backwards compatibility.
A proposal presented by Jan Boer et al. in “Backwards Compatibility”, IEEE 802.11-03/714r0, introduces a wireless preamble for MIMO. In this proposal, a short-preamble sequence used for time synchronization, frequency synchronization and automatic gain control (AGC), a long-preamble sequence used to estimate a channel impulse response, a signal field indicating a modulation scheme used in the wireless packet, and another signal field for IEEE 802.11n are firstly transmitted from a single particular transmit antenna. Subsequently, long-preamble sequences are transmitted from the other three transmit antennas. After finishing the transmission of the preamble, transmission data is transmitted from all the antennas.
From the short-preamble to the first signal field, the proposed preamble is identical to the preamble stipulated in IEEE 802.11a where single transmit antenna is assumed. Therefore, when wireless receiving devices that conform to IEEE 802.11a receive a wireless packet containing the Boer's proposed preamble, they recognize that the packet is based on IEEE 802.11a. Thus, the proposed preamble conforming to both IEEE 802.11a and IEEE 802.11n enables IEEE 802.11a and IEEE 802.11n to coexist.
Generally, in wireless receiving devices, demodulation of a received signal is performed by digital signal processing. Therefore, an analog-to-digital (A/D) converter is provided in the devices for digitizing a received analog signal. A/D converters have an input dynamic range (an allowable level range of analog signals to be converted). Accordingly, it is necessary to perform automatic gain control (AGC) for adjusting the levels of received signals within the input dynamic range of the A/D converter.
Since the estimation of a channel impulse response using the above-mentioned long preamble sequences is performed by digital signal processing, AGC must be performed using the signal transmitted before the long-preamble sequence. In the Boer's preamble, AGC is performed using a short-preamble sequence transmitted before the long-preamble sequence from a particular transmit antenna. That is, the receiving level of the short-preamble sequence is measured, and AGC is performed so that the receiving level falls within the input dynamic range of the A/D converter. By virtue of AGC using the short-preamble sequence, the long-preamble sequence and data transmitted from the particular transmit antenna can be received correctly. If all the antennas are arranged apart, the receiving levels of signals transmitted from the antennas are inevitably different from each other. Therefore, when a wireless receiving device receives long-preamble sequences transmitted from the other three transmit antennas, or data transmitted from all the antennas, their receiving levels may be much higher or lower than the level acquired by AGC using the short-preamble sequence transmitted from the particular transmit antenna. When the receiving level exceeds the upper limit of the input dynamic range of the A/D converter, the output of the A/D converter is saturated. On the other hand, when the receiving level is lower than the lower limit of the input dynamic range of the A/D converter, the output of the A/D converter suffers a severe quantization error. In either case, the A/D converter cannot perform appropriate conversion, which adversely influences the processing after A/D conversion.
Further, data is transmitted from all the antennas. Therefore, during data transmission, the range of variations in receiving level is further increased, which worsens the above-mentioned saturation of the A/D converter output and/or the quantization error therein, thereby significantly degrading the receiving performance.
As described above, in the Boer's proposed preamble, AGC is performed at the receive side using only the short-preamble sequence transmitted from a single transmit antenna, which makes it difficult to deal with variations in receiving level that may occur when signals transmitted from the other antennas in MIMO mode are received.